First Posted: 11/3/2014
Have you ever wanted to challenge yourself to do something completely crazy?
The new Buffalo Wild Wings in Wilkes-Barre allows you do just that with its “Blazin’ Wing Challenge”
For $11.29, a dozen wings doused in the chain’s “Blazin” sauce is presented along with a flashing red police light letting everyone who can see you know that someone is crazy enough, I mean brave enough, to try the challenge. This sauce is at the end of the heat scale in the Buffalo Wild Wings sauce-meter, meaning, there’s nothing spicier in house. A challenger must eat them all in six minutes or less. If completed the winner receives a T-shirt, their photo on the wall-of-fame and most importantly, bragging rights.
First, a waiver must be signed. A challenger agrees to eat wings that clock in around 300,000 Scoville units, according to ushotstuff.com. This makes it about 60 times hotter than a jalapeno pepper. The Scoville scale measures the ‘hotness’ of a chili pepper or anything derived from chili peppers. The restaurant treats the sauce with extreme caution with the label on it reading, “Keep away from your eyes, pets, children.”
While the challenge is happening, the eater can’t have anything to drink or eat other than the saucy wings. No celery, carrots, blue cheese or anything to cool the heat until the challenge is over.
At no point is this challenge easy.
The first wing is hot. The second wing is hotter. By the sixth wing, which seems to be the size of a small chicken, your lips are so numb you aren’t even sure they are moving. Tears spill down your face but you can’t wipe them for fear of going blind. The shakes come at wing eight and you aren’t even sure how you are still putting the wings in your mouth. But, you know there is a light at the end of the tunnel even if the last two wings look as big as a 10 oz. steak.
You can taste victory. Actually, you can’t taste, or smell, anything but the “Blazin” sauce.
There is no attractive way to finish this challenge. You end covered in hot sauce that you are too afraid to touch because you are convinced it is burning your skin. Your mouth is so numb that you aren’t sure you can swallow the milk that was brought to cool your taste buds. And you are certain chicken wings will not appear in your diet for at least a year.
If the challenge isn’t completed, you get a mouthful of spice and a belly full of chicken that made Weekender reporter Justin Adam Brown exclaim, “This is gross.” A sentenced that summed up the whole event.
Being the first female to attempt, and complete, the challenge at the new restaurant, I was pretty proud. But I knew that any male in my vicinity was turned off by my caveman etiquette and now my mom’s worst fear is coming true. I will be single forever but at least I have a “Blazin’ Challenge” T-shirt.